Professor Ian Watt, (1917-1999)
The Center hosts two annual conferences. Conference topics in the past have included "Realism," "Prose," "The Enemy," "Reading," "Adventure," and "Illustration." In the 2006-2007 season, "The Extreme Contemporary," addresses new directions in novel practice, with an emphasis on the novel's edge with new media. "For a Theory of the Novel of the 21st Century," will bring to Stanford emerging international scholars on the novel for a workshop on future directions in novel study.
The Center also hosts the series, Books at the Center, which brings authors of recent influential critical books to discuss their work in the company of distinguished critics. Authors in the past have included Jonathan Lamb, D.A. Miller, Deidre Lynch, and Pascale Casanova.
The Ian Watt lecture on the History and Theory of the Novel presents an annual opportunity to discuss core intellectual issues surrounding the novel and its study, commemorating the renowned Stanford professor whose work has profoundly influenced literary study for nearly 50 years. Graduate students in Stanford's Department of English and Division of Literature, Cultures and Languages, select the speaker. Speakers are not limited to works of any specific nation, language, or historical period and are encouraged to engage critical theories of the form and to contest definitions of the novel itself. Past speakers have included Bill Brown, Catherine Gallagher, Nancy Ruttenburg, and Mario Vargas Llosa.
The Center's Working Group on the Novel provides an opportunity for students and faculty in different departments whose work is oriented toward the history and theory of the novel to form a sustained working group that highlights this dimension of their work. One of the goals for the group is to address the re-scaling of novel studies, toward both less canonical European and American texts and novels outside of American and European contexts. Workshop meetings will include discussion of a specific novel, or section of a novel, that is the background for a work-in-progress, followed by a discussion of the work-in-progress.
Courses at the Center is a new pedagogy initiative for 2007 intended to foster graduate student involvement and research. This spring the Center will pilot this program with Franco Moretti's seminar on The Theory of the Novel.
